Monday, November 26, 2007

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I can't believe that November is almost over! I hope the holiday was relaxing for you and you enjoyed the food and the company you were with! I love holidays and I love the anticipation that builds up weeks before. It seems like for several weeks before Thanksgiving, my adrenaline just runs on the wonderful anticipation of the joy that big day brings!

I also love the downtime after the holiday. The time when my body slowly adjusts back to "life as normal" which seems miraculously quiet and uneventful. The time I can indulge in a good book or two and not feel guilty about it. The time when cleaning the bathroom can wait, while you and your better half snuggle under warm blankets on the couch with a good movie. I haven't always found joy in the "everyday-ness" of life. But this week I choose too! I hope you will too.

A gorgeous little fall leaf at my great-grandma's house.

Natalie at Gluten-Free Mommy is hosting this week's menu swap. The ingredient of the week is ginger! As you already know... ginger is one of my favorite spices!! Now, I will have a good excuse to add ginger to several of the meals I'll be making this week! Thanks Nat!

Since I was traveling at Thanksgiving I decided that for several of my recipes I would go ahead and place all the dry ingredients in zip lock bags. That way all I would have to do at Grandma's was add the wet ingredients and bake. This worked really well. It worked so well that I forgot about some of the items I was going to make!

Last night I prepared a simple ground beef and fresh vegetable soup for dinner. At the last minute, I remembered I had a zip-lock bag of dry ingredients for Sour Cream Cornbread. I thought it would be a perfect accompaniment to the soup!

Michael (who, normally is very portion-conscious) ate four, YES four pieces of this awesome corn bread! This recipe was so easy to prepare since I had already packaged the dry ingredients, that I think in the future I will do this on a regular basis. I also think this would be a GREAT gift for any gluten-free friends you have! Pre-package the dry ingredients of a favorite recipe, place it in layers in a pretty jar and add the recipe as a label. I love fast easy gift ideas!

My great-great grandma's iron skillet

Sour Cream (or Yogurt) Cornbread

3 Tbsp. room temperature butter

3 Tbsp. granulated sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream (or low fat plain yogurt -- I used yogurt because I had it on hand)

1/2 cup milk (I used fat-free)

1/3 cup sorghum flour

1/3 cup tapioca flour

1/3 cup brown rice flour

2/3 cup yellow cornmeal

1/2 tsp. xanthan gum

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease an oven-safe skillet (my great-grandma's iron skillet worked wonderfully!) with butter or GF baking spray. In a medium-sized bowl mix together flours, cornmeal, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder. In another medium-sized bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, sour cream, and milk. Mix thoroughly. Slowly add flour mixture to wet ingredients. Pour into greased oven safe skillet or muffin tin (will probably make around 10-12 muffins). Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. This makes a very light, moist, and fluffy cornbread!!

41 comments:

Hi, thanks for your comments on my blog. I have a question about your cornbread. I've only ever had cornbread once, which I made recently from a recipe off the net. The main thing that hit me was it was sweeter than most cakes I make. We don't have many sweet savoury dishes over here in the UK so it's a bit of a culture shock. How sweet is your recipe? Are all cornbreads sweet?

Hi Esther! Thank you for commenting! To answer your question: NO, not all cornbreads are sweet! I live in North Carolina, which is considered a southern state in the US, and we like things sweet!

YOU CAN make this cornbread without the sugar if you prefer a non-sweet cornbread! I've always eaten it sweet, so that is what I prefer! But I would love to hear how it turned out for you if you decide to make this without the sugar! I think it would still be tasty!

I think the reason "southerners"make cornbread sweet is to balance out the "savory-ness" of the main dish. I know the soup I made last night was very savory, not sweet at all, so the sweet cornbread was a nice addition to the meal!

Of course, this may be the reason "southerner's" such as myself have such a hard time losing weight!! ;-)

Tamara! You can try this recipe with whatever milk substitute you have!! ANY should work! And instead of using sour cream or yogurt, use a soy based yogurt, or a rice or almond yogurt! IF you try it with those things, I'll try it with those alternatives and see how it works! We can compare our results! I think it would work out great with soy milk, or a nut or rice milk, and a soy based yogurt product!

Yummy! Yes, I use corn tortillas, but I use the sprouted grain tortillas and a bottled gf/additive free enchilada red sauce plus plain fat free yogurt for the sauce. I also add pepper jack cheese and chopped onions. Rather than roll them, since the sprouted tortillas get soggy when wet, I just layer it in a casserole dish. It tastes the same.

Ornery's Wife -- do the sprouted grains bother you? I know they technically still contain gluten if they are sprouted spelt or wheat... What kind do you use? This is a great enchilada recipe! i get tired of the taste of corn tortillas, so I'm interested in trying the sprouted grain tortillas!! Thanks so much for letting me know how you make them!

Tamara -- Actually I'm just guessing on the rice yogurt, I KNOW they make soy based yogurt -- (there are several brands at the Food Lion I shop at!), and I'm just guessing that maybe there is a rice based yogurt, but I'm not totally sure about that!

That's funny; in Georgia, people who have lived here a long time say, "Real Southern cornbread is NOT SWEET--only Jiffy is!" My grandfather's cornbread (his family having been in GA since the 1700s) was definitely a savory crackling cornbread. (It may be a state-by-state thing.) But I love sweet cornbread and usually prefer it with savory dishes. Esther, with some honey and butter, sweet cornbread can make a nice little dessert!

I, too, just made cornbread, but mine has no eggs. If I could eat eggs, I'd definitely give yours a go!

Sally -- You are right! It probably does vary from region to region/ state to state! Here in eastern NC, the only kind of non-sweet cornbread they have are cornsticks or hoecakes. Cornsticks are long, thin, molded, deep fried sticks of basically cornmeal and water, served mostly with pork barbecue. Hoecakes, which my mom-in-law lovingly makes for me, are pats of cornmeal dough, flattened and cooked on the stovetop, not really fried, just sort of "baked" on the stovetop in an iron skillet. Yum!

Esther -- I had no idea this would turn into such an interesting cornbread conversation! Creamed corn is corn that has been partially pureed, which releases the liquid content of the kernals (according to wikipedia!)many people add sugar and starch and even cream to it as well. In the US you can buy canned creamed corn in the vegetable aisle at many grocery stores.

Carrie, Sunday night I made your corn pudding and the cranberry cobbler and they were both big hits. My very picky gluten free daughter loved the corn pudding. She wasn't going to try it but I put some on her plate anyway. She loved it and ate it again on Monday night!

The cranberries went very quickly and were so easy to make. I think my husband ate half of it at one sitting!

GLUTI GIRL -- You have NO idea how awesome that is to me! I'm so glad you and your family tried the recipes and you liked them!! That's so cool!!! I LLLLOOOOVVVEEEE that cranberry cobbler AND the corn pudding is such a old-fashioned yummy dish! I just love it! Thank you SO much for letting me know how much you liked it!!

Here's another Southerner chiming in...cornbread should not be sweet!!! But it definitely should be made in the oldest cast iron skillet you can find =) Crumble a wedge into a glass of milk and you have a lovely dessert.

Carrie, I've been taking it easy and reading a few books too. It's so nice to just sit and read an entire book in one sitting and ignore the laundry and incredibly messy kitchen =)

Mary Frances -- LOL... I guess I'm one of the FEW???? southern folks who LIKES my cornbread sweet?? Where's Ginger at.. I know Ginger must be with me on the sweet cornbread! If you're reading Ginger, you've gotta speak up for me gal!

Well, it just goes to show Abby's point! Everybody's family likes it differently! I was raised on the homemade sweet stuff! I didn't even know what "Jiffy" was until I was in college! Sweet or not, it's good stuff!

TAMARA -- THANKS girl!!! I knew there had to be more sweet cornbread lovers out there!! ;-) Oh, I'm not opposed to Jiffy!! I used to use it a lot before going GF! We just never ate it growing up! I didn't know what it was!

Ginger -- Well, I still enjoyed Jiffy, and I have always liked sweet cornbread (AND I like unsweet versions too like hoecakes and cornsticks) but sweet will always be my favorite and I don't consider it a cupcake! (There's not THAT much sugar in it!)

Esther -- I think it's really up to you gal... if you enjoy non-sweet breads simply try this recipe without the sugar, if you like sweet cornbread try it with the sugar. Apparently it's not just a "southern" thing as I thought it was. Basically it's up to your tastebuds. If you like sweet, than you'll like it, if you don't... than you won't! And I think that's all we need to say about that!

carrie - this was really yummy! I made it last night and it turned out great - almost as good as Jiffy! lol! (okay, maybe even better than Jiffy.) After all the discussion, I thought it was going to taste really sweet, but it didn't - it just tasted like normal corn bread to me. I guess I'm used to the sweet stuff. Thanks again for the recipe!

KAREN!! You rock chic! I'm SO glad you and your hubby liked this! I didn't think it was THAT sweet either!! (HEY! It's better than Jiffy! LOL) But seriously, I appreciate you trying it and I'm glad you liked it so much! Thank you!!!

Don't get me wrong--I do like sweet cornbread. Savory dishes go with sweet cornbread. But dishes that are already sweet (like the chili with a bit of chocolate in it that I made recently) do go better with savory cornbread.

OK, so I'm not a Southerner (a New Mexican by birth) but I love my cornbread sweet. With whole kernels of corn in it. I actually made an amazing cornbread this week (that I still need to post about) that had both white and brown sugar in it. It was sweet and delicious!!

Kelly! Isn't that cool! To be honest with you I've used applesauce in a pinch too!! I just LOVE how well it works in things like this! And this is a great tip for making the cornbread casein free as well! Thanks for letting me know it worked so well!!

Just made the cornbread, just used 1 TB less of sugar and rice milk. I used my cast iron skillet, too. HEAVENLY! And I have never even liked cornbread, in fact, this is my first time making it! Once again, GLG does not disappoint!